Little boy. "And then they steamed bang into the monitor."
Little girl. "Brother, don't you sink my monitor!"
Little boy (without heeding, and hurrying toward the climax). "And the
torpedo went at the monitor!"
Little girl. "My monitor is not to sink!"
Little boy, dramatically: "And bang the monitor sank!"
Little girl. "It didn't do any such thing. My monitor always goes to bed
at seven, and it's now quarter past. My monitor was in bed and couldn't
sink!"
When I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Leonard Wood and I used
often to combine forces and take both families of children out to walk,
and occasionally some of their playmates. Leonard Wood's son, I found,
attributed the paternity of all of those not of his own family to me.
Once we were taking the children across Rock Creek on a fallen tree.
I was standing on the middle of the log trying to prevent any of the
children from falling off, and while making a clutch at one peculiarly
active and heedless child I fell off myself. As I emerged from the water
I heard the little Wood boy calling frantically to the General: "Oh! oh!
The father of all the children fell into the creek!"--which made me feel
like an uncommonly moist patriarch.
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